Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure, for example, relates to wireless communication systems, and more particularly to techniques for using an enhanced physical control format indicator channel (ePCFICH) to identify characteristics of a control region including a set of physical downlink control channels (PDCCHs).
Description of Related Art
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time-division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems. A wireless multiple-access communication system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, otherwise known as user equipment (UE) devices.
In some wireless communication systems, base stations and UE devices may communicate on one or more enhanced component carriers (eCCs) in a contention-based radio frequency spectrum band. LTE/LTE-A signals may also be transmitted or received over a contention-based radio frequency spectrum band (e.g., a radio frequency spectrum band for which transmitting devices may need to contend for access (e.g., a radio frequency spectrum band that is available for unlicensed use, such as Wi-Fi use, or a radio frequency spectrum band that is available for use by multiple operators in an equally shared or prioritized manner)). Base stations and UE devices may also communicate on one or more eCCs in a contention-free radio frequency spectrum band. A contention-free radio frequency spectrum band may be a radio frequency spectrum band for which transmitting devices may not contend for access because the radio frequency spectrum band is licensed to particular users for particular uses (e.g., a licensed radio frequency spectrum band usable for LTE/LTE-A communications). In at least some scenarios, the configurations or formats of physical channels (e.g., PDCCHs, PCFICHs, physical downlink control channels (PDSCHs), etc.) optimized for non-eCCs may not be suitable for transmission on eCCs.